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She’d hold on.
I loved needling our tiny pilot. She lived up to her red hair and was feisty and opinionated. She was also the best pilot I’d ever seen. She could make a Talon do things no one else could.
“Why do you think she went down?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Jameson said. “But what Idoknow, is that it would take something drastic to take Colbie down.”
I tried not to tap my boot and worked to get a lock on my shit. This wasn’t like me. I was the easy-going twin. Zeke was the intense, moody one, while I was the life of the party.
I didn’t want to think about death. So many people had died in the initial alien invasion. Humanity had since worked hard to rebuild and protect our growing towns, but things were still dangerous. I knew life could be short. My uncle, my father’s twin, had died fighting the aliens.
Dad still felt that loss to this day.
Zeke was named for our uncle, while I was named for Marcus—head of the legendary Hell Squad who helped defeat the aliens—and who was also Jameson’s father.
I vowed every day to live my life to the fullest. We all knew how easily good things could be snatched away in the blink of an eye.
But I couldn’t stay calm and controlled now. All because of the feisty, little redhead who was in danger.
“I have a visual on the crash site,” Gavin said.
I leaped up and pushed ahead of Jameson.
Through the cockpit window, the Talon’s downlights swept over the sea of trees. It was pitch black out there; we were far from any towns, including New Sydney.
I saw a gouge where something had ripped through the trees, and the light glinted off metal.
My stomach dropped.
“Fuck,” Jameson muttered from beside me.
The Talon was in pieces. How could anyone have survived that?
God, Colbie.
Jameson’s face hardened as he studied the site. The light illuminated several monsters picking through the wreckage. There was no sign of Colbie.
“The trees are too thick for us to rappel down.” Jameson turned to face the squad. “We’ll have to use the new wing suits.”
Our tech guru, Maxim, had recently incorporated wing suits into our armor. He was part scientist, part inventor, and part genius. He kept our weapons and tech upgraded, and was always working on some new gadget to help us. I’d had a lot of fun testing the wing suits, but we’d never used them in an active mission.
But I didn’t care about that. Whatever it took to get down there and find Colbie.
Jameson lifted his chin. “All right, Hunter Squad, let’s do this.”
Vibrating with energy, I pressed the controls on the side panel and the side door of the quadcopter opened. The cool, night air hit me in the face.
“Okay, Hunter Squad, I’m seeing multiple monster heat signatures,” a throaty female voice said in my tiny earpiece.
Sasha Rahia—Kai’s cousin— was our comms officer. She was currently sitting back at base in the control room, monitoring the feeds to give us intel.
“Take those ugly fuckers down and bring our girl home,” Sasha added.
“Roger that, Sasha,” Jameson said.
“Be careful down there,” Gavin called out from the cockpit.
I gripped the side of the door frame and glanced out. I wanted my boots on the ground.
